9 Secrets to Finding the Best Local Food

There are lots of downsides to our industrial, far-flung food supply that have vaulted local food to its massive popularity. The average food item travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate. The average farmer gets 9 cents of your food dollar, while grocery stores, marketers, processors, and middlemen get the other 91 cents. Large industrial farms employ just three full-time workers per $1 million in revenue, while local farms employ 13.

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All those reasons have contributed to the tripling of the number of farmers’ markets over the past 15 years. Consumers want to meet the people who grow the food they eat and support a food system that has long-term, local benefits. But let’s face it, farmers’ markets, great as they are, can be inconveniently located, scheduled at odd hours, and sold out of all the good stuff unless you get there within an hour of the opening. Then what? Sign up for a CSA! A CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) farm puts you in direct contact with a single farmer who supplies you with a box of fresh produce once a week throughout the entire growing season, which, depending on where you live, usually lasts about 6 months. You’re essentially buying a share of the farm’s harvest, similar to stock-market shares in a company, and you can buy any number of shares to fit your personal diet or that of a big family.

There are more than 12,500 farms in the United States that sponsor CSA programs, compared to just over 7,000 farmers’ markets. You can search the web for CSAs near you, but that won’t always result in a successful farmer-locavore pairing. There are a few things any CSA newbie should think about before signing up—after all, these do require a rather hefty up-front investment—but find a local farmer who supplies good organically grown food, and you may never have to worry about navigating a crowded farmers’ market again.

Continue reading for 9 questions to consider when signing up for a CSA.

Probably the most important question to ask of any CSA is whether the share you purchase will include the vegetables you like best. Not all farms grow the same varieties of produce. Some stick to supermarket basics—tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, corn—while others branch out into heirloom varieties, like black radishes and purple tomatillos. Some farms grow a huge variety of all types of crops, while other farmers limit their selection to the most popular ones. If you’ve got picky family members, you may be better off with the latter, while more adventurous eaters might prefer the former.

Photo: Eyewire

Do you like to cook?

Love to cook? You’ll love a CSA. The weekly boxes provide a constant variety of foods you may or may not be familiar with, along with constant inspiration to come up with new dishes. But if you don’t like to cook or don’t know how, a weekly veggie delivery may not compel you to start. Take a cooking class. Most community colleges now offer classes in cooking seasonal foods. And check out the farmer’s website or social media outlets. CSAs often provide recipes to accompany their weekly boxes, and some farms have Facebook pages where CSA members and the farmer can swap cooking tips and ideas.

Photo: Plattform/Getty Images

Are you a quick learner?

The number-one reason people give for not renewing a CSA share is that they feel guilty about all the food that gets wasted, either because they can’t eat it fast enough or they don’t know how to cook what they get. If you’ve taken a cooking class, you won’t have to worry about that second part, but if your share is loading you down with too many tomatoes or a massive crop of celery you can’t eat in a week, are you willing to take a few hours on the weekend to preserve your veggies? You don’t have to do much, but there is a little bit of a learning curve involved for figuring out which vegetables freeze best, or how to can things like tomatoes and green beans. Bookmark this website on your home computer. It’s the homepage for the National Center for Home Preservation and provides crop-by-crop instructions for freezing, canning, and, if you’re really adventurous, even fermenting your food.

Another alternative is to ask the farmers whether they offer half-shares, smaller shares that provide just a few vegetables each week and are less intimidating for noncooks.

Another, perhaps easier, solution is to share your share. For example, split the cost—and the produce—with a friend or coworker, or find a neighbor, a relative, or a local food bank or soup kitchen that can take surplus food off your hands.

When and where do you go to pick up your share? How does the CSA operate? How much does it cost?

These are all basic questions that can help you decide which CSA is best for you. Cost is a given—depending on the size of the share you get, you’ll be asked to pay between $200 and $600 at the beginning of the growing season. The good news is that you won’t have to pay for fresh vegetables at the grocery store for at least 6 months. Some CSAs provide boxes of food at a single drop-off point each week, while others allow you to come to the farm and choose from a variety of what’s available that week. In either case, make sure the farm or drop-off location is convenient, or else you may never make it to pick up all that food you’ve already paid for.

Photo: Eyewire

How involved can you or will you need to be?

Some CSAs ask their members to help out on the farm. That could be a pro or a con depending on your schedule. In some cases, you can pay a lower up-front cost if you agree to do extra work. Just make sure to ask what, if any, time commitment might be expected of you before signing up.

Sure, locally grown food is fresher than food shipped from 1,000 miles away, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s pesticide-free. Considering that pesticides are being linked to every ailment from obesity to overactive children, it’s important to avoid them locally, where pesticides can infiltrate your air and water supply. Ideally, you’ll find a local farmer that is USDA Organic certified, but if not, ask which pesticides, if any, the farmer uses. Farmers that use organic practices but aren’t certified are eager to share their methods with you. If a farmer acts cagey when pressed about pesticide use, though, find another one.

When you sign up for a CSA, you’re essentially making an investment in a farm so the farmers have the money they need to grow healthy, hopefully organic, food all season. When they succeed, you get lots of food. When disaster hits, you share in the burden. Heavy rains, droughts, pests, and any manner of other natural disasters can ruin part of the harvest, and you won’t get a refund. In those cases, farmers do work to fulfill their commitment—for instance, by trading with other farmers. But it’s worth asking your farmer what his or her plans are in the event of bad weather.

CSAs aren’t limited to just vegetables. Some offer fruit, meat, dairy product, and egg shares as well, providing you with literally one-stop shopping for everything you need.

Ready to sign up? Head to LocalHarvest.org or one of these other local-food websites to find a CSA near you. In addition to listings for farmers, Local Harvest also allows customers to rate their CSAs so you can find the farmers with the best reputations in your area.

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